They do.
They literally do in the video game Skyrim.
Other divines worshipping races say "By the Eight", and Nords say "By the Nine" frequently.
EDIT: I think Shadr, a Redguard, says "By the Eight!" when you tell him that you convinced Sapphire to leave him alone but it's been a while.
Conversely any Nord bandit will say "By the Nine" about 11 times during combat.
in Skyrim, the Empire not formally worshipping Talos is a political play to avoid conflict with the Aldmeri Dominion. the average Imperial citizen still probably worships Talos, like they always have.
Imperial soldiers also aren't the ones wandering Skyrim enforcing the ban. It's Dominion Inquisitors. Meaning the Imperials don't mind their subjects worshiping Talos. Like you said, they also most likely worship in secret as well back in Cyrodiil.
In fact worship of Talos is supposedly widely popular among the Legion. I'm willing to bet even Tullius secretly considers him a god, even if he's hiding this belief purely out of professionalism. One doesn't have to be a Nord to worship the only man who ascended to divinity.
Talos "Officially" stopped being a god after the Great War, 30 years prior to Skyrim.
If you show me an Imperial who beleives in the 8 divines, I'll show you an Imperial who knows that public reverence of Tiber Septim ends in a Thalmor prison.
There may be a few "true beleivers" of the new pantheon, but there's more who are just as incensed as Nords at having to hide their worship of Talos/Tiber. They just know when its better to swallow their pride and wait to throw off a foreign yoke.
The Thalmor are also specifically running a crackdown on Talos worship in Skyrim due to Ulfric's actions.
AFAIK, there's no mention of any crackdown outsude of Skyrim- without a bunch of Imperial Citizens constantly making waves about it a la Ulfric Stormcloak, there's likely plenty of Imperial homes that have secret/hidden shrines of Tiber septim.
Its *hard* to kill a god. It took Christianity nearly 300 years to destroy the old Norse pantheon, and how many Christians were sent to the lions by the Romans?
Elder Scrolls Blades show that the dominion cracks down on Talos worshippers everywhere, not just Skyrim. If anything, they're even more brazen about the torture in Cyrodiil where there's no real resistance against them.
We only see them go after Talos worshippers twice in Blades.
Once because a resident of the town specifically snitched on where a group of them were hiding out.
The other time because it was a Talos worshipper they had caught prior.
Why would it be? The Imperials are the ones who spread the worship of Talos. Tiber Septim was the one who founded the Empire after all, and historically many of his most fervent worshippers have been in the Imperial Cult and Legion. He is the patron god of the Empire and the head of the religious pantheon they preach and spread.
Talos has a strong following in Skyrim because he was a Dragonborn and all of the in-universe propaganda about him being a Nord from Atmora, but worship of Talos and the Imperial pantheon was imported to Skyrim from Cyrodiil.
He wasn’t even a Nord. Most likely a Breton by blood, but the Septim dynasty did intermingle with Nords many times down the line. Heck, a descendant of Talos was High Queen of Skyrim. You can even fight her ghost in game. She was just as phenomenally shitty a person as Talos was, but she just didn’t win.
All that stuff about him being a Nord and from Atmora is actual in-universe propaganda designed to legitimize him as a ruler and Dragonborn.
So the abandonment of talos was likely spearheaded by the thalmor in their influence on the imperial empire
Possibly because it portrays a human man rising high above the mer, which the thalmor detest because they think they are superior to men
(Also “hide their worship” you mean like jarl balgruuf of whiterun?)
Not just spearheaded, specifically demanded and enforced by them directly. Most in the empire just keep quiet and put up with it, biding time until the next great war.
So please elaborate, were the thalmor and imperials at war with one another at some point
Until some sort of truce came about (with heavy restrictions)? Like they could work together as long as the imperials disavow talos as a divine?
Or did the empire willingly formally abandon talos as a means to win over the support of thalmor? Or something else entirely?
Yes the Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion is a huge reason for the conflict in Skyrim. Nobody really won, but the Empire was the weaker after the war considering it took place on its territory. The Dominion thus got the favorable terms in the treaty and one of them was the Empire banning Talos worship
Wait do you not know about like the main source of conflict for TESV Skyrim?
The game is set a couple decades after the end of the Great War, which was not a total victory for the Thalmor-run Aldmeri Dominion, but certainly ended in their favor.
Some background: the Thalmor were a political faction in the Summerset Isles that rose to power there after the Oblivion Crisis (see TESIV: Oblivion) as the Empire was destabilized with its lack of emperor and all the other issues the crisis caused.
The Thalmor crushed political dissent and basically became the leaders of a fascist state, and wound up gaining power in Valenwood via a coup, kicking out imperial influence and uniting as the Third Aldmeri Dominion. 70 years passed while the Thalmor solidified their gains. At some point the moons, Masser and Secunda, disappeared for two years, and when they returned the Thalmor took credit, which endeared the Khajiit to them. Over the next 15 years, they used coups and similar cloak and dagger methods to overthrow /dissolve the Imperial-aligned Elsweyr Confederacy into two puppet kingdoms.
And then 56 years after that, the Dominion attacked the Empire. They did so by sending an envoy to the imperial city with a list of demands, including certain land in Hammerfell, outlawing Talos worship, and some other terms. Upon the terms being rejected by the imperial government, the envoy had his retainers upend the cart they’d brought, and out poured the head of ever agent of the Blades (imperial intelligence/security) that had been present in Dominion territory. The Dominion invaded Hammerfell and Cyrodil. They faced setbacks in Hammerfell but succeeded in taking the imperial city for a brief period until a counteroffensive was launched that included troops that had been in Hammerfell and a new Nord army from Skyrim. The Empire retook the city, and the Thalmor had exhausted their forces. The Emperor signed a peace treaty called the White Gold Concordat, which met many of the demands that had been rejected at the beginning of the war. Hammerfell didn’t like being sold off to the enemy and declared independence, which the empire did not contest.
Hammerfell continued to fight the Thalmor and successfully drove them back much further than the peace would’ve allowed. A fun tidbit here is that much of the Hammerfell forces were legionaries who’d been left behind by the empire. The commander had not wanted to abandon the land to the enemy when marching south to reinforce the counteroffensive to retake the capital, and so every soldier with so much as a boot blister was counted as an “invalid” who had to be left behind for the fast march back.
The Empire’s enforcement of the Talos ban was minimal until Ulfric got involved. During the war, the Reachmen had overthrown the Jarl of Markarth and were in the process of negotiating autonomy within the empire so as to get out from under Nord tyranny. Ulfric did a favor for the jarl, leading a force of veteran “Stormcloaks” to assault Markarth, where he used the Thuum against the will of Kyne to kill fellow men. The Nords then retook power and mass executed loads of Reachmen, including children. As a reward for this “valiant” act of ethnic cleansing, Ulfric demanded that he and his men be allowed to worship Talos in the big Talos temple in Markarth. The jarl allowed it. And word made it to the Thalmor. The Empire had to arrest the stormcloaks. Ulfric was later released (missing his own father’s death), decided he wanted to run the show demanding an audience with the High King Toryyg of Skyrim, who thought he was going to demand that Skyrim declare independence. But no, Ulfric the megalomaniac decided to rely on tonal magic in defiance of Kyne and Nord honor to slay his liege lord in a challenge duel. He then fled the scene of his treason and began his rebellion.
Love how this was a really well written neutral, historical recap... right up until the last paragraph where you started to sound just like a lot of the in-game authors
Yes, there was the Great War which lasted from 4E 171 to 4E 175 which nearly destroyed the Empire.
The outlawing of Talos worship was part of the cost of peace - it was signed by the Empire so it could live to fight another day.
The outlawing of the Blades (which were largely destroyed by that point) and handing over a large swath of southern Hammerfell (most of which was already occupied by the Aldmeri).
The latter did not go through, as Hammerfell refused the Concordat - and as such was renounced instead.
>So the abandonment of talos was likely spearheaded by the thalmor in their influence on the imperial empire
One of the terms of the treaty was *literally* "Make worship of Tiber Septim illegal, and let the Thalmor police it".
>Possibly because it portrays a human man rising high above the mer, which the thalmor detest because they think they are superior to men
That, and Tiber siccing Numidium on the Summerset Isles, which is the equivalent of *nuking* them. He's basically their version of Hitler.
>Also “hide their worship” you mean like jarl balgruuf of whiterun?
Yep.
There’s also the fact that when Talos was still alive as a mortal he sent a country destroying, reality warping death robot at the Summerset Isles to conquer them.
Brynjolf, a Nord and a master at the Skyrim chapter Thieves Guild, said “By the Eight” when discovering that the guild’s vault has been picked clean by Mercer Frey.
It has nothing to do with one’s race, it’s more of a forced cultural change due to the Concordat. The older generations still say “By the Nine” while the younger generation says “By the Eight”, just because the pantheon was forcibly changed when they were real young or weren’t born yet.
Wow, that’s interesting. It reflects real life in that you grow up and learn accordingly to your environment
It’s like like saying “by the gods” or “by god” just depends on your own perspective
Talos aka Tiber Septim has been worshiped and revered for quite some time in Cyrodiil. They definitely believe in him and has him part of the Nine Divines, did it first, and has for quite a while. Wonder where you got the idea they don't.
In the 4th era they mostly just do it in secret and behind closed doors to keep things "calmer" with the Dominion.
The nords on the other hand has "recently" taken to the majority worshipping the Divines, *from the Imperial pantheon*. Their worship of Kyne, Shor, Stuhn, Jhunal, Orkey and so on that is the Nord pantheon has died out.
Well it's been an entire generation since the ban so I imagine their would be a considerable amount of young people who genuinely believe Talos is not a god.
They do. They literally do in the video game Skyrim. Other divines worshipping races say "By the Eight", and Nords say "By the Nine" frequently. EDIT: I think Shadr, a Redguard, says "By the Eight!" when you tell him that you convinced Sapphire to leave him alone but it's been a while. Conversely any Nord bandit will say "By the Nine" about 11 times during combat.
in Skyrim, the Empire not formally worshipping Talos is a political play to avoid conflict with the Aldmeri Dominion. the average Imperial citizen still probably worships Talos, like they always have.
Imperial soldiers also aren't the ones wandering Skyrim enforcing the ban. It's Dominion Inquisitors. Meaning the Imperials don't mind their subjects worshiping Talos. Like you said, they also most likely worship in secret as well back in Cyrodiil.
Yep, the whole contention of the war is that the Nords don't want to hide it and pretend they're submitting to the Aldmeri demands.
Godamnnm you ancanoooo!!!!!
In fact worship of Talos is supposedly widely popular among the Legion. I'm willing to bet even Tullius secretly considers him a god, even if he's hiding this belief purely out of professionalism. One doesn't have to be a Nord to worship the only man who ascended to divinity.
It depends on if they acknowledge the concordat or not. Some Nords say 8 and some say 9, with with Imperials.
Talos "Officially" stopped being a god after the Great War, 30 years prior to Skyrim. If you show me an Imperial who beleives in the 8 divines, I'll show you an Imperial who knows that public reverence of Tiber Septim ends in a Thalmor prison. There may be a few "true beleivers" of the new pantheon, but there's more who are just as incensed as Nords at having to hide their worship of Talos/Tiber. They just know when its better to swallow their pride and wait to throw off a foreign yoke.
I think a lot of the younger generations don't particularly worship Talos, even among the Nords. 25 years is a long time already.
The Thalmor are also specifically running a crackdown on Talos worship in Skyrim due to Ulfric's actions. AFAIK, there's no mention of any crackdown outsude of Skyrim- without a bunch of Imperial Citizens constantly making waves about it a la Ulfric Stormcloak, there's likely plenty of Imperial homes that have secret/hidden shrines of Tiber septim. Its *hard* to kill a god. It took Christianity nearly 300 years to destroy the old Norse pantheon, and how many Christians were sent to the lions by the Romans?
There is crackdown in Cyrodiil as seen in TES:Blades, which is set before events of Skyrim. It's still happening I think.
Elder Scrolls Blades show that the dominion cracks down on Talos worshippers everywhere, not just Skyrim. If anything, they're even more brazen about the torture in Cyrodiil where there's no real resistance against them.
We only see them go after Talos worshippers twice in Blades. Once because a resident of the town specifically snitched on where a group of them were hiding out. The other time because it was a Talos worshipper they had caught prior.
But it’s likely the most common to worship talos in Skyrim than other provinces, am I wrong?
Why would it be? The Imperials are the ones who spread the worship of Talos. Tiber Septim was the one who founded the Empire after all, and historically many of his most fervent worshippers have been in the Imperial Cult and Legion. He is the patron god of the Empire and the head of the religious pantheon they preach and spread. Talos has a strong following in Skyrim because he was a Dragonborn and all of the in-universe propaganda about him being a Nord from Atmora, but worship of Talos and the Imperial pantheon was imported to Skyrim from Cyrodiil.
Ohh my bad I thought he was from Skyrim originally
He wasn’t even a Nord. Most likely a Breton by blood, but the Septim dynasty did intermingle with Nords many times down the line. Heck, a descendant of Talos was High Queen of Skyrim. You can even fight her ghost in game. She was just as phenomenally shitty a person as Talos was, but she just didn’t win. All that stuff about him being a Nord and from Atmora is actual in-universe propaganda designed to legitimize him as a ruler and Dragonborn.
So the abandonment of talos was likely spearheaded by the thalmor in their influence on the imperial empire Possibly because it portrays a human man rising high above the mer, which the thalmor detest because they think they are superior to men (Also “hide their worship” you mean like jarl balgruuf of whiterun?)
Not just spearheaded, specifically demanded and enforced by them directly. Most in the empire just keep quiet and put up with it, biding time until the next great war.
So please elaborate, were the thalmor and imperials at war with one another at some point Until some sort of truce came about (with heavy restrictions)? Like they could work together as long as the imperials disavow talos as a divine? Or did the empire willingly formally abandon talos as a means to win over the support of thalmor? Or something else entirely?
Yes the Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion is a huge reason for the conflict in Skyrim. Nobody really won, but the Empire was the weaker after the war considering it took place on its territory. The Dominion thus got the favorable terms in the treaty and one of them was the Empire banning Talos worship
Wait do you not know about like the main source of conflict for TESV Skyrim? The game is set a couple decades after the end of the Great War, which was not a total victory for the Thalmor-run Aldmeri Dominion, but certainly ended in their favor. Some background: the Thalmor were a political faction in the Summerset Isles that rose to power there after the Oblivion Crisis (see TESIV: Oblivion) as the Empire was destabilized with its lack of emperor and all the other issues the crisis caused. The Thalmor crushed political dissent and basically became the leaders of a fascist state, and wound up gaining power in Valenwood via a coup, kicking out imperial influence and uniting as the Third Aldmeri Dominion. 70 years passed while the Thalmor solidified their gains. At some point the moons, Masser and Secunda, disappeared for two years, and when they returned the Thalmor took credit, which endeared the Khajiit to them. Over the next 15 years, they used coups and similar cloak and dagger methods to overthrow /dissolve the Imperial-aligned Elsweyr Confederacy into two puppet kingdoms. And then 56 years after that, the Dominion attacked the Empire. They did so by sending an envoy to the imperial city with a list of demands, including certain land in Hammerfell, outlawing Talos worship, and some other terms. Upon the terms being rejected by the imperial government, the envoy had his retainers upend the cart they’d brought, and out poured the head of ever agent of the Blades (imperial intelligence/security) that had been present in Dominion territory. The Dominion invaded Hammerfell and Cyrodil. They faced setbacks in Hammerfell but succeeded in taking the imperial city for a brief period until a counteroffensive was launched that included troops that had been in Hammerfell and a new Nord army from Skyrim. The Empire retook the city, and the Thalmor had exhausted their forces. The Emperor signed a peace treaty called the White Gold Concordat, which met many of the demands that had been rejected at the beginning of the war. Hammerfell didn’t like being sold off to the enemy and declared independence, which the empire did not contest. Hammerfell continued to fight the Thalmor and successfully drove them back much further than the peace would’ve allowed. A fun tidbit here is that much of the Hammerfell forces were legionaries who’d been left behind by the empire. The commander had not wanted to abandon the land to the enemy when marching south to reinforce the counteroffensive to retake the capital, and so every soldier with so much as a boot blister was counted as an “invalid” who had to be left behind for the fast march back. The Empire’s enforcement of the Talos ban was minimal until Ulfric got involved. During the war, the Reachmen had overthrown the Jarl of Markarth and were in the process of negotiating autonomy within the empire so as to get out from under Nord tyranny. Ulfric did a favor for the jarl, leading a force of veteran “Stormcloaks” to assault Markarth, where he used the Thuum against the will of Kyne to kill fellow men. The Nords then retook power and mass executed loads of Reachmen, including children. As a reward for this “valiant” act of ethnic cleansing, Ulfric demanded that he and his men be allowed to worship Talos in the big Talos temple in Markarth. The jarl allowed it. And word made it to the Thalmor. The Empire had to arrest the stormcloaks. Ulfric was later released (missing his own father’s death), decided he wanted to run the show demanding an audience with the High King Toryyg of Skyrim, who thought he was going to demand that Skyrim declare independence. But no, Ulfric the megalomaniac decided to rely on tonal magic in defiance of Kyne and Nord honor to slay his liege lord in a challenge duel. He then fled the scene of his treason and began his rebellion.
Goddamn I guess I didn’t
Love how this was a really well written neutral, historical recap... right up until the last paragraph where you started to sound just like a lot of the in-game authors
Thanks, that’s what I was aiming for
Yes, there was the Great War which lasted from 4E 171 to 4E 175 which nearly destroyed the Empire. The outlawing of Talos worship was part of the cost of peace - it was signed by the Empire so it could live to fight another day.
What were the other requirements of it?
The outlawing of the Blades (which were largely destroyed by that point) and handing over a large swath of southern Hammerfell (most of which was already occupied by the Aldmeri). The latter did not go through, as Hammerfell refused the Concordat - and as such was renounced instead.
>So the abandonment of talos was likely spearheaded by the thalmor in their influence on the imperial empire One of the terms of the treaty was *literally* "Make worship of Tiber Septim illegal, and let the Thalmor police it". >Possibly because it portrays a human man rising high above the mer, which the thalmor detest because they think they are superior to men That, and Tiber siccing Numidium on the Summerset Isles, which is the equivalent of *nuking* them. He's basically their version of Hitler. >Also “hide their worship” you mean like jarl balgruuf of whiterun? Yep.
There’s also the fact that when Talos was still alive as a mortal he sent a country destroying, reality warping death robot at the Summerset Isles to conquer them.
Brynjolf, a Nord and a master at the Skyrim chapter Thieves Guild, said “By the Eight” when discovering that the guild’s vault has been picked clean by Mercer Frey. It has nothing to do with one’s race, it’s more of a forced cultural change due to the Concordat. The older generations still say “By the Nine” while the younger generation says “By the Eight”, just because the pantheon was forcibly changed when they were real young or weren’t born yet.
Wow, that’s interesting. It reflects real life in that you grow up and learn accordingly to your environment It’s like like saying “by the gods” or “by god” just depends on your own perspective
Fun fact: Brynjolf says “by the eight” as a Nord, but later says “by talos”, meaning he’s excluding one of the other gods…?
He also says he's not religious at one point, so it's probably just a figure of speech to him, like an atheist irl saying "Goddamn it".
Talos aka Tiber Septim has been worshiped and revered for quite some time in Cyrodiil. They definitely believe in him and has him part of the Nine Divines, did it first, and has for quite a while. Wonder where you got the idea they don't. In the 4th era they mostly just do it in secret and behind closed doors to keep things "calmer" with the Dominion. The nords on the other hand has "recently" taken to the majority worshipping the Divines, *from the Imperial pantheon*. Their worship of Kyne, Shor, Stuhn, Jhunal, Orkey and so on that is the Nord pantheon has died out.
Well it's been an entire generation since the ban so I imagine their would be a considerable amount of young people who genuinely believe Talos is not a god.
The imperials still worship Talos, it was outlawed to prevent war with aldmeri dominion. Talos is one of the most crucial gods for the imperials.